When performing medical procedures such as surgery, obtaining pathological samples, biopsies, and the like, medical personnel still use methods such as palpation, sight and static two-dimensional imaging to locate and sample or review items of interest when performing such procedures. Such reliance upon the skill and experience of the medical personnel and dimensionally-limited imaging of the item of interest may result in reduced quality and accuracy of the medical procedure. For example, pathologic staging of solid tumors involves determining the presence and extent of disease. Precise specimen processing is desired for establishing patient customized management plans that may indicate the need for post-operative chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. Failure to identify malignant involvement in tissues can lead to the misdiagnosis and mismanagement of patients, leading to undesirable outcomes. Furthermore, correctly determining the extent of disease involves accurate assessment of the tumor's size, and the presence or absence of metastatic disease involving lymph nodes and distant tissues. Hence, the pathologist's assessment is crucial, and it plays a key role in basing future treatment options for patients.
Similarly, surgery has offered the best opportunity of a cure for patients with solid malignancies. Furthermore, the best surgery is the first surgery. Optimal surgical approaches to cancer resection in the past were limited to visual and tactile cues in identifying the tumor's location and extent. Surgical procedures were based upon surgical anatomy and traditional planes of resection that cancer cells disregard. Hence, it is desirable that the surgical team “see” all of the tumor(s), including metastases, to achieve the best resection and offer the patient the best possible outcome.
Likewise, biopsies such as fine needle biopsies are performed predominately using the medical personnel's sense of sight and feeling. Biopsies may be inaccurate or incorrect when the needle or other biopsy instrument extends through the item of interest and unaffected tissue obtained.
Other forms of medical procedures and surgeries such as, for example, reconstructive surgeries that involve bone replacement also have predominately relied upon the sight and feel of the surgeon, which could result in painful mis-alignment and the need for additional surgeries.
It can be said that a surgeon is as good as his or her tools. Unfortunately, though, because of the reliance upon the sight and feel of the medical professional, it has been found that in cancer surgery up to 50 percent of all resections that residual tumor has been left behind. It can take some amount of time for the residual tumor to become medically symptomatic. In pathology, even with slice depths of only two to five millimeters (mm), staging can be incorrect up to 30 percent of all cases. And, with reconstructive surgery, bone implants can be misaligned in over 50 percent of all surgeries. Therefore, what are needed are systems and methods that overcome challenges in the art, some of which are described above.